Solutions in PowerApps

As you have learned from an earlier announcement today, you now can leverage the Solution system for canvas apps. This feature greatly enhances our current App Lifecycle story, allowing you to easily transport canvas apps and other components from one environment to the other. Earlier, this was possible only for model-driven apps. The PowerApps team has been busy bringing canvas apps into solutions and enabling the key solutioning capabilities so you can have a seamless and convenient inline experience.

Let’s take a closer look at this solutioning experience in PowerApps and how you can use it today.

Canvas apps in a Solution

Previously, you could move only one canvas app from an environment to the other. Now, if the canvas apps are created from a solution, you can move multiple canvas apps at once by putting them in a single solution. If you create from any other areas such as home or apps list, the canvas app can’t be included in a solution. This includes all existing canvas apps. This is a gap that we will soon address. For now, make sure to create the app from a solution if you intend to move them. Read more on that here.

Canvas apps are searchable in Advanced Find today, but they are not clickable yet.

Canvas apps get moved from one environment to the other using solution import/export. Once a solution, which contains a canvas app is exported, the latest published version of the canvas app gets pushed into the zip file created by solution export. During solution import into another environment, the canvas app’s logical name will be carried over along with the display name. The canvas app itself will be moved from the zip file into PowerApps and the app will be listed in the imported solution as well as the apps list.

Access Solutions easily

Earlier, you could only access solutions from the Advanced customizations area in PowerApps. All solutions can now be accessed directly by selecting Solutions in the left navigation. Selecting Solutions will display a list of solutions or let you create one. You can access almost all of the operations that you can currently do with solutions such as Import, Export, Clone, Publish all customizations, Show dependencies, etc. You can also access the classic solution explorer by selecting Switch to classic.

View and search Solutions details

One of our key goals is to bring the solutioning capabilities right inline within PowerApps, so you can do your work all in one place. Previously, if you clicked on a solution, it would take you out to the classic solution explorer. Now, clicking on a solution will show the solution components inline.

One of the new capabilities we introduce with solutions in PowerApps is the ability to search inside a solution. You can search for component by name, type, etc. Just type the search keyword into the search box at the top right corner. This is a convenient feature that's not available in the classic solution explorer experience. It can be difficult when you are trying to locate a component out of thousands of other items in your solution.

In additional to search, you can also filter the components list view by component type to narrow down your items. This is specifically helpful when you are working with just one component type, such as entities or web resources.

Working inside a Solution

If you come from Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement and have an existing solution you are already working with, you can open it up or you can also create a brand new one. Once you are inside a solution, you can create any new component, from canvas app to model driven app, from entity to option set, dashboard, reports, etc.

If there are components that you or your team had created in a different solution, you can pull them into your solution using the Add existing option. Note that, you can add only those canvas apps to other solutions that were created from a solution.

Most of the solution operations are available on the command bar. When you select one or multiple components of the same type, the commands at the top will switch accordingly in context of the type of selected component.

Closing thoughts

Solution is an area the PowerApps team will continue investing in. We will bring in more features and bridge some currently known limitations. You can track them here and we will make sure to keep this list up to date. If you have suggested improvements and features, please send us feedback, add them to PowerApps Ideas or vote for existing ideas.

Note: The solutioning experience is available only online and for environment version 9.1.0.267 and later. To check your version, please go to …PowerApps admin center> Environments > select your environment > Details tab.

What is PowerApps?

PowerApps is a service for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile - without the time and expense of custom software development.